Free Republic

United Airlines is taking a bizarre business risk and announcing to the world that it will no longer hire the best pilots available but will instead make sure that 50% of their trainees for flying you around the world will be women and minorities—talent and skill be damned. I’m not making this up. I wish I were.Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color. Learn more and apply now.....Their...

United Airlines also announced plans to add back flights, saying it will resume about 130 nonstop routes in July that were suspended when travel collapsed as the coronavirus spread rapidly. American said it plans to operate 55 percent of the U.S. flights that it ran in July 2019. The airline only operated 20 percent of its schedule in April and May.

A 95% plunge in passengers. Billions in losses. A rush for new debt. A recovery that executives expect to take years. Coronavirus is roiling the airline industry and the Oracle of Omaha has seen enough. Warren Buffett told investors Saturday that Berkshire Hathaway has sold its entire stakes in the four largest U.S. airlines — American, Delta, Southwest, United — as the pandemic upends another bet on the sector that the famed investor had shunned for years before a surprise return in 2016. “And it turned out I was wrong about that business because of something that was not in...

A former NBA player has filed a lawsuit against United Airlines for $10 million, accusing a flight attendant of “race-baiting.” According to the lawsuit filed in New York Eastern District Court, the incident unfolded on July 13 on United Airlines Flight 1537 from Las Vegas to Newark Airport in New Jersey. Murdock, who is black, asked a flight attendant whether he could move to an empty emergency exit row behind him to sit alongside his son, who was seated in a different row. According to court documents, the stewardess, a white woman, told Murdock the seats he was looking to...

United is packing in more passengers than ever United Airlines will be fitting its Boeing 757-300 fleet with slimline seats by the middle of 2018, increasing the number of economy seats on the aircraft to more than 200. The Chicago-based carrier will add 21 seats to the main cabin on the aircraft for a total of 210 seats. First class will continue to have 24 seats.

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A woman is suing United Airlines, claiming she was kicked off a flight out of Houston because someone complained that she had a "pungent odor." The mother and her children were on a flight to San Francisco in 2016. The suit says a man in business class told the flight crew that she smelled, and he was not comfortable flying next to her. According to the lawsuit, the woman, who is Nigerian, believes she was booted because of her race. She and her children were put on another flight five hours later. United has not commented...

Employees complain of ‘jelly of the month club’ profit-sharing. Be extra nice to that United Airlines employee the next time you plan to “Fly the Friendly Skies.” There’s a good chance they’re smiling on the outside, and fuming on the inside after a memo leaked late last week from the airline’s president, Scott Kirby, said the company will be canceling its quarterly bonus program, and replacing it with a drawing for prizes.

Weather was pretty bad in the Northeast today. But no matter how bad your commute or travel plans were, I don't think they were worse than 50 or so souls aboard a United Airlines flight into Dulles airport outside Washington reportedly endured. The single line on an otherwise staid official report from the Aviation Weather Center at the National Weather Service says it all: P CRJ2/TB MOD-SEV/RM VERY BUMPY ON DESCENT. PRETTY MUCH EVERY ONE ON THE PLANE THREW UP. PILOTS WERE ON THE VERGE OF THROWING UP. AWC-WEB

Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee said she was targeted by a passenger accusing her of taking her first-class seat “because I was an African American woman”.....the airline said she was not given the seat because she is a congresswoman. Passenger Jean-Marie Simon accused the airline of giving up her first-class seat on a flight earlier this month from Houston to Washington, D.C., to Jackson Lee, a Democrat, in a report in the Houston Chronicle. “I am disappointed in having to respond to this accusation, but I believe transparency is very important,” Jackson Lee said in a statement posted to her...

An attorney and private school teacher from Washington, DC, is accusing United Airlines of removing her from her first-class seat only to give the seat to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX). snip Airline staff told Simon the seat was taken and gave her a $500 voucher, along with another ticket for the same flight in Economy Plus.

December 24, 2017 Daniel Greenfield Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D - Enron) is entitled to the privileges of her position. Like discriminating against the disabled and other people's airline seats. A judge has refused to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of discriminating against and mocking a disabled staffer — charges the Texas Democrat denies. Mrs. Jackson Lee’s legal team sought to have the complaint dismissed, arguing in part that actions concerning her staff are protected under the Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution. In a lengthy ruling, the judge disagreed. And as a civil rights...

It is known as the Queen of the Skies - the world's first jumbo jet that forever changed the face of plane travel. And on Tuesday United Airlines' last Boeing 747 was given a send-off befitting royalty as the last aircraft in the company's service completed its final flight. United Flight 747 took off from San Francisco airport around midday bound for Hawaii, the same route the company's first version of the aircraft flew back in 1970. Tickets for the specially chartered voyage sold out within hours of being released, according to USA Today, despite selling for upwards of $550...

U.S. Airlines are vying for attention as the Boeing 747 leaves their fleets, just as they did when it entered their fleets in 1970. And the world’s aviation geeks are watching closely. United announced Monday that its final Boeing 747 flight will take place Nov. 7 with a celebratory recreation of its first United flight from San Francisco to Honolulu. Twenty-eight minutes later, at 3:47 p.m. Monday, Delta announced that it recently operated its final Boeing 747 Tokyo Narita-Honolulu flight (on Sept. 5), and that it had operated what were thought to be the final domestic 747 flights from Honolulu...

Just weeks after a giant bunny mysteriously died in the cargo hold of a United Airlines flight, the airline was plagued with yet another animal-related fiasco. A United flight from Houston to Ecuador was delayed for more than three hours Friday after a scorpion "emerged from a customer's clothing," United said in a statement. United confirmed that the passenger was not stung. Paramedics arrived at the gate to examine the customer, and United said he "declined further treatment." "[A]s a precaution, a new aircraft was arranged," United said. This is the second time in a month that United Airlines has...

FULL TITLE: Now United Airlines passengers are being attacked by SCORPIONS! Deadly insect crawls out on flight and forces evacuation A United Airlines flight was delayed for several hours in Texas after reports of a scorpion crawling out of a passenger's clothes. Passengers say United Flight 1035 was evacuated on Thursday at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston following the scorpion sighting. The flight, which was headed for Quito, Ecuador was delayed for three hours. News of the scorpion incident got out when passengers started tweeting about the ordeal.

In yet another horror story about the state of commercial aviation, a nurse from Kansas City says she was forced to pee into a cup in her seat because she was not allowed to use the plane’s lavatory. Nicole Harper posted her account early Saturday on Facebook after, she says, she became frustrated at her inability to get anyone at United Airlines to acknowledge her complaint. “United Airlines refuses to take my call, now I can’t sleep and just keep thinking about how wrong this is,” Harper wrote. She encouraged her Facebook friends to share her story. Harper said her...

In a new report, United Airlines admits several mistakes were made before, during and after a man was violently dragged off a flight earlier this month, including calling in law enforcement to resolve an incident that was neither a safety nor security issue. In the report, released Thursday, the airline says it had allowed internal policies to distract from the need to treat passengers with dignity and respect and it outlines what the company intends to do to prevent a repeat of the incident. Under the airline’s new customer-first policy, travelers who voluntarily give up their seats will be eligible...

Newly released police documents claim that Dr. David Dao, the passenger who was shown being dragged off a United Airlines flight on April 9 in widely shared videos, behaved violently toward the officers removing him, but his lawyer dismissed this account as “utter nonsense.” The phone videos taken by other passengers set off waves of criticism and multiple statements from the airline, each more apologetic than the last. The police reports were released Monday afternoon in response to a freedom of information request filed by The New York Times and other news organizations. The releases included audio of the original...

That the forceful ejection of a United Airlines passenger the Sunday before last proved so newsworthy indicated something that’s largely been ignored by the airline’s myriad critics and “advisers.” What happened was news precisely because it’s so rare. But for a commentariat prone to turning anecdote into statistic, United’s resort to force when it came to properly removing David Dao (more on this in a bit) from one of its airplanes was naturally (to the chattering class, at least) a sign of a tone-deaf airline; one clueless about customer service thanks to a culture within the airline that doesn’t prioritize...

A passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 3411 said that one of the three officers who dragged a Kentucky doctor off the plane was “laughing” during the chaotic episode. In a “Letter to the Editor” published in the Chicago Tribune this week, Louisville, Kentucky, resident Jason Powell wrote how he was a witness to the Sunday incident that involved David Dao, 69, being physically dragged off a full flight before takeoff at O’Hare Airport. “The disgusting mishandling of the situation included everyone from the rude ticket agent who demanded that this man give up his seat on the flight … to...